


Half Way Gone

by Cunien



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In his dreams, he collects moments like jigsaw pieces from different puzzles, pushing them until they fit together.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half Way Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic about the characters from the miniseries Band of Brothers and in no way the real men. I mean absolutely no disrespect.
> 
> Written for Berlin By Christmas on livejournal, a whole EIGHT years ago! Christ, I feel old.

Half Way Gone

The wet moonlight slides across each drop of water on each blade of grass. A tiny spark of flame, the metallic flick of a lighter. A warm orange glow shines on dark eyes below a furrowed brow, the tiny moment of light deepening shadows in hollowed cheeks. The firefly glow of a cigarette is the only sign that a person stands there, in the darkness that clings to the barrack walls.  
Watching him. 

Just like all the other times. Except tonight, it’s going to end somewhere else, somewhere different. The cigarette brushes against his skin, he murmurs a half-hearted curse and hears the other man laugh, low in his throat and quiet like smoke. There’s a hand, clutched at the front of his jacket and pulling him into the shadows, another one at the back of his neck, calloused fingers digging into him.

There’s a kick in his ribs. 

* 

“Jeeeeesus...,” Luz mumbles, rubbing his chest and trying to flatten himself further into the ground. “I knew there was a reason I don’t usually share a foxhole with you. What’s with the wake up call?”. He cracks open a bleary eye. 

“You were making funny noises,” smiles Christenson. 

“I was...what?” 

Perconte makes a series of fluttery gasps and moans, grins, and goes back to brushing his teeth. 

“Well, you know”, Luz mutters, shifting and hoping that his blush goes unnoticed, “me and Ava Gardner, we don’t hardly get any time to ourselves anymore, what with the whole invasion of Europe thing.” 

Christenson chuckles dutifully. 

“You blushing?” asks Perconte around a mouthful of toothpaste. He spits it out and leaves it to melt a little dip in the snow. 

“The world has gone insane. George Luz is actually _blushing_.” 

* 

In his dreams, he collects moments like jigsaw pieces from different puzzles, pushing them until they fit together. Some girl back home, the way she used to kiss his throat - just where his jaw runs up to his ear, or that one back in Aldbourne, the warmth of a body pushed up against his. Then there was Lip’s knee, banging against his in the turbulence of a C-47, or the weight of Muck and Penk piled into a foxhole all around him. Or Joe Toye: leaning across the bar, fist full of Luz’s uniform, the slight leer in his smoke-roughened voice. 

And before he knows it, it is just Toye - just Toye and his calloused hands reaching out from the shadows, tangling in his hair. 

* 

If Luz slept all night, he thinks it might drive him crazy. Luckily for him, his bed is a cold hole in the ground that feels disturbingly like a pre-dug grave, just waiting for him to pop his clogs. So this is generally not conducive of sleep. 

As soon as he shuts his eyes, Joe Toye is there 

At least, he’s pretty sure it’s Joe. 

He has no idea why it would be Joe. 

Why some part of him might _want_ it to be Joe. 

Or why the rest of him can’t squash that other part into submission and make it so it is actually Ava Gardner, or Marlene Dietrich. And not Joe Toye. 

Luz grits his teeth and hums a tune, desperate to clear his head. Instead he tries to think about the girls of Aldbourne, or all those pinups Hoob used to stick around his bunk. Sure, they’re real pretty, he tells himself. I ain’t exactly going to kick them out of bed. 

But Toye? 

He lights up a cigarette to keep himself warm, muttering an argument with himself. 

Logically, he tells himself. He needs to think logically, about why he can’t sleep for dreaming about one of his buddies. After a while he comes to a small and unhelpful conclusion - that he is either nuts, or just very alone. 

In England they threw themselves at anything in a skirt, regardless of wives or fiancés or sweethearts back home. It was about confirming that you were alive and still breathing, and capable of feeling something, even if it was the slight, irksome guilt of betrayal. 

“I ain’t no queer,” he whispers, ever so quietly. The softly falling snow absorbs his careful words. He’s ashamed of the way it comes out, this statement. It’s hateful and harsh, but he can’t think of any other way to say it. He knows it’s true though. Which is only makes it all the more confusing. 

* 

It’s a few days later - days in which Luz purposefully comes into contact with Toye even less than usual - that it happens. The Germans are shelling them again, and these are the only times in which Luz actively prays. This time he’ll learn his lesson, though: that when the shells are falling and the air is thick with blood and dirt and splinters, though his brain can only pull itself from blind terror long enough to form the meagre words to pray for his own skin, it is not enough. 

Because although God keeps sparing Luz’s own flesh and blood and bone, and amazingly enough, his sanity too, it is not enough to spare others. And this, he’ll find in time, is a suffering far worse than being torn by metal bomb shards, or pierced with bullets. 

He arrives just after Doc Roe, who is calling between Guarnere and Toye and Buck as though they are all three about to slip away from him at any moment. His voice is quiet and steady, but frantic somehow. He shouts for another medic, for stretchers. Roe has the crook of his arms underneath Bill Guarnere’s, and is heaving him from where he lies in a tangle of limbs and bloodied snow. 

A stifled groan comes from the ground as Roe moves Guarnere to lean against a nearby tree. Joe Toye is coming to, his face scrunched up like a mask - not real. Not real at all. Luz’s eyes flick to Toye’s leg - what’s left of it. A cold weight drops suddenly somewhere in his stomach, and he rocks a little, jerking his eyes away. 

“Luz,” Roe says. He doesn’t look up, just jabs a morphine syrette into Toye’s thigh and searches in his bag for a bandage and sulpha. 

“Um...” 

“Luz - I need you to take Buck somewhere okay?” 

Luz sucks in a breath and pushes gently at Buck’s chest. 

“C’mon buddy, let’s go sit down,” he whispers. 

* 

Luz sits in a foxhole - he thinks it’s Lip’s. It’s certainly not his, because he can’t remember where he dug his. He knows that it was somewhere near Muck and Penkala’s, and down a few from Guarnere’s. But they’re all gone now, and so he’s no idea how to find his way back. 

None of this has been easy - ever since he left Rhode Island, he’s been under no illusion as to what lay across the ocean for him in Europe. But all along he’s had his role and he’s learnt it well. Now everything is falling apart around him, and he’s not quite sure what purpose he leads anymore. Or how he’ll get through what’s still to come without this role and these lines to say. 

There is an ache deeper than he could imagine - down deeper and colder and more alone than he ever thought possible - and he wonders what is left of him now. It’s clear to him that all he has ever been was dependant on the people around him. 

It feels as each shelling strips away a layer of flesh and muscle and now he is down to the bone. Each empty foxhole is like another bullet hole somewhere in them all. 

There’s no point in proving how alive you are anymore, he tells himself. You’re half way gone already.

And he doesn’t dream of Toye again - doesn’t dream at all.


End file.
